The Last Guardian
by erttheking
Summary: Commander Garrus Vakarian is desperate to find anything that could help him and his crew in their desperate struggle against the Reapers, and his search has taken him to a long dead planet with a shattered sphere hanging over it. Patreon sponsored story.


Commander Garrus Vakarian didn't want to admit it, but he had no choice. The Council was losing the war with the Reapers. Ever since he and his crew had found the Prothean Beacon on the freshly established Turian colony of Dominus, they had been on a desperate trek across the galaxy to do whatever they could to delay the oncoming threat for just a little while longer. The most unlikely of allies had been made, an Asari archaeologist, a Justicar, a former STG operative, a Krogan Warmaster, a Quarian engineer, a "perfect" tank-bred Krogan, a Drell assassin, even a Geth and an unearthed Prothean of all things.

They were an odd bunch that had been through unimaginable trials in the past five years, Rachni, Collectors, Heretic Geth, simply learning that Heretic Geth were a thing, and the Reapers themselves. Countless battles had been fought, far too many victories had been won by the skin of their teeth, and the impossible had become merely improbable. But the Reapers were still winning the war.

It was an overwhelming fact. No matter how many miracles they performed, curing the Genophage, forming an alliance with the resurgent Rachni, ending the war between the Quarians and Geth, the Reapers were too many, too strong, and utterly everywhere. The Council was getting desperate and had authorized dozens of edicts in the hope of eeking out a victory. One of them was the lifting of restrictions on activating Mass Relays. Before, it had taken months of debate to get the Council to even consider taking action with a freshly discovered Mass Relay. Now all it took was a simple message to the Council confirming that one had been found. Which was exactly what the Will of Iron was doing right now.

The Will of Iron, Garrus's ship, was a very special ship. It was the first of its kind, a stealth frigate, and while several more had been produced during the Reaper War, the Will of Iron was special. It was utterly unconventional, in a way that would've gotten Garrus court-martialed and possibly exiled in less dire times, with its mixed crew, more relaxed fraternization standards, and a lack of any formal battle doctrine. Yet, the results spoke for themselves, and the Will of Iron was tolerated. Garrus couldn't help but feel that there was a certain dry humor to the Will of Iron being used to break another long-standing Council guideline with expressed permission.

"Progress on the Relay?" he asked. From where he was standing on the bridge, he had a good view of the dormant Relay from the viewport. Even now, looking at it made him feel uncomfortable. Nearly every Turian grew up hearing stories about the Rachni Wars and the unspoken horrors that could be lurking behind every Mass Relay. It was why they could only be opened up after careful consideration. Even now, with a galaxy-spanning catastrophe bearing down on them, the more primal part of Garrus felt that this was wrong, that they were inviting further catastrophe by doing this. He ignored these worries. He had somehow managed to get this far in a military career despite being a living embodiment to the non-ideal Turian, it was too late to turn back now.

"We're reaching the final stages," his Turian navigator said. "The internal power source has been initialized and connected, everything is in order." He looked at Garrus. "I only need your word at this point, sir. Shall I bring it online?" Garrus nodded firmly. "Very well then, sir." He pressed a single button. At once, the Relay burst to life, an orb of blue light popping into existence in the middle, as the rings around it began to turn. They started slow, before slowly picking up pace, rotating perpendicular to each other. "Everything is green across the board, sir," the navigator said. "Should I bring us through?"

"In a moment, I want to speak to the crew first," Garrus said. The navigator nodded silently as Garrus reached over to the controls, opening the shipwide com. "Attention all hands. I've asked a lot of you in the past five years, and I'm afraid that's not going to stop anytime soon. We're venturing into uncharted territory, I need you to be prepared for anything. We could walk straight into the defense grid of a militaristic species that puts the Reapers to shame, or we could come out into a void of literal nothing between star systems."

He bit back a bitter sigh. "You've all done more than what anyone could've reasonably asked of you, and yet here I am asking you for more, with it just being a warm up. I'll be blunt, this isn't fair, nothing about this situation is fair. We are doing everything we can to just hold on, and sometimes it feels like it may be for nothing. But I know every last one of you isn't content to have it all be for nothing. I've seen it in all of you, a fire in your guts that I see every time we sortie out when we take another one of the Reapers' pawns away when we do everything we can to kill another one of them. Hold onto that fire, feed it, don't let it burn out. It's what's been getting us through all of this, and it's going to be what brings the Reapers to their knees."

"So hold on. We are struggling but we are nowhere near close to losing this war. The Reapers are facing opposition as they have never faced before in their eon old existence, alliances that they never thought was possible. We need to keep pushing until we find a crack in their formations, then exploit it. I fully intend for this to be the last cycle, one way or another." With that, Garrus stepped back, the intercom turning off. "Take us through."

"Copy that," the navigator said, pressing a handful of controls. The Will of Iron listed in the direction of the Mass Relay. At once, the core of the Relay glowed with a higher intensity, energy crackling off of it and enveloping the ship. An odd tingling sensation shot through Garrus, the same feeling he felt every time a ship traveled with a Mass Relay, and in the blink of an eye, the Relay was gone. Having moved too fast for his brain to comprehend, they were now thousands of light years distant, facing a completely unfamiliar set of stars, a different Mass Relay now behind them.

"It looks like we came out near the edge of the system. Scanning the system now sir, kinetic barriers at maximum strength and all weapons primed and loaded," the navigator said. "Results coming in now. I...spirits." The navigator blinked in astonishment, countless alerts pinging all over his controls. "Sir! I'm seeing signs of countless settlements throughout the system! Planets and moons clustered more towards the center."

Garrus's interest was peaked at once. "Anything near the Relay?"

The navigator shook his head. "Negative sir. The Relay is orbiting a dwarf planet that has no signs of habitation on it at all. Two of the farther planets look to be uninhabited and unexplored as well. There's a gas giant beyond them that appears to have artificial structures in orbit however, I'm attempting to get more in-depth scans now." There was a pause while Garrus's mind raced. If the species that inhabited this system hadn't reached out to the edge yet, odds are they had not reached a point in their development where they utilized Mass Effect. This would make them technologically primitive compared to the galaxy as a whole, with them being on the tech levels of the Yahg and the few Drell still living on their homeworld. He clicked his mandibles in irritation. This species wouldn't be of much help against the Reapers if anything it would be for the best to go back through the Relay, turn it off, and pretend they had never been seen. The Reapers would ignore them if Garrus left them alone, they were too underdeveloped to be harvested.

As he thought that, an idea started to form in the back of Garrus's mind. If the worst came to worst, they could leave information on the Reapers with this species and let them prepare. Liara had been working on a time capsule for the last few months, and a species that had developed into an interplanetary society but not yet an inter-stellar one would be the perfect foundation for 50,000 years of preparation against the Reapers. But then the navigator spoke.

"Sir? Those objects around the gas giant? They're ships, warships judging by the design. And they're wrecks." Garrus looked down in surprise as the navigator continued to type into the controls in front of him. "And I'm seeing another ship graveyard further in the system, in the middle of an asteroid belt. Spirits commander, this entire system looks like the far end of the Omega-4 Relay. All the ships are destroyed, and the scanner can't even begin to describe the type of damage that was done to them. It looks like they were taken apart at the atomic level. Not even the Reapers can do that."

"Can you detect any communications coming from the settlements?" Garrus asked at once, the implications already weighing heavily on his mind. Did this species have some sort of advanced weapon that surpassed even the Reapers in capabilities? Or had they been attacked by an outside source? It was a question that he almost didn't want to know the answer to. And yet, his navigator confirmed his fears.

"No sir," he said in disbelief. "I'm picking up nothing. Secure or otherwise, all of these settlements are dark. In fact, the closer I look, the less I see. There are no emissions that you normally see with active infrastructure, and I'm seeing a lot of signs of damage in these settlements. No ship activity, no heat signatures from the planets, no...anything. Sir? This is a dead system."

Garrus repressed the urge to swear. "And you're certain this isn't the Reapers?" He already knew it wasn't, the Reapers wouldn't leave this much evidence lying around. They would leave behind evidence that a species had existed, but not that they had been violently annihilated, it would put younger species on edge. But still, he had to ask.

"None of the damage I'm seeing matches up with anything that the Reapers have ever done," the navigator said. "This is completely alien in every sense of the word." Garrus let out a bitter sigh. Odds are, this had turned out to be a dead end. Maybe, by some miracle, Council scientists could look at these ruins and potentially pull some useful technology from it. But unless they managed to get the weapon that had atomized hulls, and Garrus had a very bad feeling that this long-dead species itself wasn't the one who had developed it, they would not find much.

"Another dead species," Garrus remarked. "Seems even the Reapers don't have a monopoly on this. Very well. Do whatever you need to do to finish up your scans so that we can present a complete report to the Council on that. After that, we need to decide if we want to explore any local systems in this area, or if it's too dangerous and if we should head back and seal the Relay behind-"

"Wait, sir!" the navigator said suddenly. "I just picked up a signal! It's weak, but it's coming from the third planet in this system! I can't tell what it's saying, but it's on automated repeat." The navigator looked up. "I can trace its source. It looks like it's coming from a particularly large structure, right at the center of a massive city."

"Close in on its position. Is there anything between us and it?" Garrus asked at once. There was a flurry of typing as a response.

"The third planet has a good deal of orbital satellites that look like they could be armed. Possibly a planetary defense grid. It seems to be offline though. Should I activate the stealth systems to be on the safe side?"

"Yes, you should," Garrus said. "Hone in on that location and prepare a shuttle. I'm going to prepare an away team. Anything else?"

The navigator hesitated, then nodded. "There's something in orbit around the third planet, just above the city in question. Look." The navigator enlarged the map so that Garrus could better see it. In low orbit above an abandoned city, so low that by all rights it should be crashing into the planet was a massive white sphere the size of a small moon. It was cracked right down the center.

XXXXX

Garrus couldn't help but keep looking at the floating object as the Turian shuttle descended into the atmosphere of the third planet. The planet in question had all of the ideal qualities of a habitable world, a magnetic core, average gravity, and a temperate climate combined with an atmosphere that wasn't too thin or too thick. The atmosphere was primarily a combination of nitrogen and oxygen, with other gasses present to a lesser degree, meaning that they could potential breathe in the air. Despite this, he had ordered his away team into hardsuits, there was no telling what kind of diseases could be present on this world. This was redundant in Tali's case, but it never hurt to be safe.

And safe was the very last thing that that giant white sphere made him feel. Everything about it felt wrong. It was startling enough to see a megastructure that clearly wasn't Prothean, or rather Reaper, in nature. But even Mass Relays or the Citadel didn't defy gravity like that. The sphere wasn't in orbit, and the cracked nature of it made Garrus severely doubt that it could propel itself upward. Yet, somehow, it stood still in the air, as opposing to crushing the sprawling metropolis underneath it.

The shuttle sped forward, underneath the orb and over the city below it, prompting Garrus to look down. The city was in a sorry state. It was in an obvious state of disrepair. A giant wall that had once surrounded it was crumbling, countless breaches plainly obvious all around it, and even the sections that were still intact were in a dilapidated and sorry state. The buildings on the far side of the wall weren't in a better state. Many of them looked as if they had been on the receiving end of tank shells, with countless ones missing rooms, floors, or having been reduced to rubble. The inner sections were in better shape, but still had telltale signs of negligence. Green flora was spreading everywhere, and more than a few buildings had collapsed due to a simple lack of maintenance.

"We're coming up on the source of the signal now," the pilot of the shuttle announced. Garrus nodded, checking his rifle one more time as the shuttle slowed, descended, and finally came to a stop, the door opening up. Garrus disembarked, his away time at this side.

"Huh, I'm getting nostalgic," Wrex said, landing on the ground with a heavy thud and looking around. "Take away the green and we're back on Tuchanka."

"What happened here?" Tali asked, taking a step forward, her shotgun in hand. "This place looks like it was abandoned. There's not enough damage for whatever happened to have killed everyone."

Garrus shot a glance at Liara. Once upon a happier time, she had been an archeologist by trade, maybe she would know. She noticed him looking at her. "Yes Tali, it does look like whatever fighting happened here was mainly contained to the outer city limits, with only fragments making its way towards the center. Most of the damage here is simple lack of maintenance. General erosion and exposure to the elements."

"Is there any chance that the people who lived here evacuated?" Garrus asked. "If there's that much of a lack of damage?"

Liara gave a shrug as a response. "It's impossible to tell from a glance. I'd need a good month going over all of this with a proper kit to get you more in-depth information." She sighed. "A few years ago, this would've been the discovery of the century, I would've had to cut my way through a swarm of grant seekers. Now? It just feels like another graveyard that falls in with all the others." Garrus turned his attention to Javik, his last hope for an explanation. The Prothean merely shook his head.

"This species would've been in the stone age during the height of my kind, even if they fell ten-thousand years ago," he said bluntly. "It is possible that they were observed by my kind, but if they were, I was not informed of it."

"Right," Garrus said, feeling dejected. "Back to following up on that signal. I don't think it's exactly going to take in-depth reasoning to figure out where it's coming from." He pointed. There was a massive temple-like building near the center of the city. It looked as if it had been carved out of pure white stone and marble once upon a time, but had fallen into a state of disrepair. Vines and other plant life had grown up the walls, large chunks of the masonry had fallen off, and what had once been white had been stained brown and green in all but a few places.

"Some sort of holy temple, maybe?" Liara asked?

"Possibly," Garrus remarked, taking in the sheer size of the building. It stretched well over all of its neighbors, five or six of which could easily fit inside it width wise. "Stay on guard. Even after all this time, there could be automated defenses in there." He received four nods as an answer as his companions all fell in behind him as he took point. They advanced on the entrance to the temple, a towered door that was hanging loosely on its hinges and stepped inside.

Garrus had thought of a dozen different possible reasons for what the structure had been used for, but it became clear the second he had a few of the inside. It was a mausoleum. Unmistakable stone coffins filled it, along with an accompaniment of life-sized statues in front of each one, all of figures in armor holding weapons. Some of them were in relaxed positions, others in meditative ones, while a fair few were holding swords and firearms over their heads in triumph. All of these were scattered about on either side of a long, straight pathway that led towards the end of the temple. At the far end was a single coffin, and behind it was a statue that dwarfed all the others, stretching to the very roof of the temple. A figure in black armor with a red stripe, a massive pistol in one hand.

"Ah," Wrex said, looking around. "Honored dead. Probably their more famous warriors. Doubt that they let the rank and file wear armor this fancy." Wrex made a good point, Garrus couldn't help but think. The armor depicted in all of the statues was very expressive and ornamental, to the point where in some places it looked downright impractical. A cornucopia of colors, capes, hoods, elegant emblems, all of it in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Pulling himself away from all of this, he checked his omni-tool. "We're close. The signal is coming from the far end of the temple." He looked at the gargantuan statue again. "No prizes for guessing where it's coming from."

"Why did that one get such special treatment, do you think?" Tali asked as they advanced forward, checking corners and potential blind spots as they went. "A leader? General?"

"Could be any number of reasons," Liara replied. "It's impossible to say for sure. Though, whoever it was, it looks like they were some sort of warrior. They wouldn't be here otherwise." It was perfectly true, and also a comment that didn't leave much room for response. After a slow, calculating approach, they reached the tomb. There was an odd little object resting on it, a ridged drone with a single optic. The source of the signal.

"Tali, check for explosives or other traps, we don't want this thing blowing up in our faces," Garrus said, the team keeping a safe distance from the coffin.

"Copy," Tali said, her omni-tool activating and her three-fingered hand flying over it. "I'm not seeing anything that could be harmful, but I'm also seeing a lot of systems that I can't make heads or tails of." She glanced at Garrus. "If possible, I'd like to examine it back on the ship maybe we can get something useful out of it."

"Wait, what!? Oh no no no! None of that!" Five different firearms snapped in the direction of drone. It had spoken, bright blue lights blinking on as it soared up above the tomb, bobbing back and forth. "Come on! I just spent the last ten minutes convincing Rasputin to not drop a few hundred missiles on your head! Do you have any idea how trigger happy that guy is!?"

"I'm sorry," Garrus said, his voice guarded and neutral, his rifle not budging. "We were under the impression you were inactive. Question, are you a V.I. or an A.I.?" This had not been what he had expected, and it could easily go one of two ways. A malfunctioning greeting program, or something capable of much more intelligent thought."

"A what?" the drone said, its optic focusing on Garrus. "What the heck is a V.I.? If you're asking if I can think for myself, yeah I can. You need more than pre-programmed bleep bloops to keep Rasputin docile. Or to slap together a translation package based on only scraps of conversations, cut me some slack here."

"I don't remember Virgil being this mouthy," Wrex grunted. "So question, you sent that signal we picked up? Why?"

"No offense, I wasn't looking for you in particular, just that anyone would come," the drone said. "What ARE you, exactly? I've seen a fair share of aliens in my day, but you don't look like any of them. You aren't Fallen, you aren't Vex, you aren't Hive, you aren't Taken," it glanced at Wrex, "though you could pass off as a Cabal. A small one. Maybe an angry teenager with stunted growth." Wrex cocked his head.

"It's just, well, look," the drone said. "There's a lot to go over if you want everything to make sense and it'd take a few hours at the very least, so I'm going to try to keep it to the bullet points, but I don't want to explain this twice." It whirled around to look at the coffin. "Can one of you get this open." There was a hesitant exchanging of glances. The drone noticed. "Oh come on, you've come all the way down here, I bothered talking to you, I'm not going to kill you all. I told you, I talked Rasputin DOWN from killing you all."

"And who is Rasputin exactly?" Garrus asked, his mind racing as he planned potential evacuation routes and orders to be given to the Will of Iron.

"A Warmind on Mars who, ugh, look. I told you I don't want to explain this twice, can you please get the coffin open?" the drone said.

"Tali?" Garrus asked. "Any traps?" The Quarian again went to her omni-tool for a minute before she shook her head. "Ok. Wrex? Open it. Have your barriers up at full strength just to be safe."

"And if you are killed, we will crush this synthetic into scrap metal," Javik said, all four of his eyes glaring at the drone. It responded by making a very drawn out groan of exasperation.

Wrex chucked. "Sounds good to me." Approaching the coffin, bright purple energy flared around him as he grabbed the lid. With a hefty grunt, he pushed it off in a single thrust. It clattered to the ground. Inside, around the same size as a Turian, was the figure in armor that had been depicted in the giant statue. Motionless, armor covered in dust, its hands were crossed on its chest, where a heavy pistol was resting. "So, what? You want the gun?"

"No," the drone said, floating over the body. "I spent a few decades siphoning up trace bits of Light from other Ghosts and Guardians and even then I only have enough to do this once, so I need you all to be quiet for a minute." Before anyone could comment, a blinding ray of light emanated from the drone, bathing the coffin below in it. For a second, it looked as if the drone had lost its mind and was acting like a malfunctioning spotlight. But then a strange feeling overtook Garrus, a feeling of power washing over him in a way that sent a chill up his spine. Something unnatural was happening here.

Then he heard it. It was faint, barely audible, but a thin, sharp gasp echoed from the coffin. The light from the drone vanished and it hovered forward a bit, looking directly down. The figure in the coffin stirred. "Joker? Where am I?" To the dumbstruck shock of all others, the armored figure sat up gingerly in the coffin, weapon in hand, a feminine voice speaking clearly, but with exhaustion. "Who are they?" the figure asked, gingerly getting out of the coffin.

"Easy Guardian, you've been out of it a long time," Joker said, its voice changing from passive-aggressive snark to concern. "It's been six-thousand years."

"Six-thousand, but wait," the Guardian said, her body stiffening. "What about the others? The City? What happened to the Darkness? The Traveler?" Garrus felt nothing but raw confusion as the alien woman talked, and he could clearly see the same feeling on his crew's faces.

"Like I said, it's a long story," Joker said. "But I've got to get the Guardian caught up. Guardian? The Darkness didn't win. You did it, you finished it off for good." There was a long, painful pause. The Guardian was looking directly at Joker, a heavy feeling in the air. Garrus had a very bad feeling that the Guardian was unaware of the state of the city outside. "But we lost too many people. Guardians and civilians alike. The few survivors died off after a few centuries. And the Traveler? It's...it's dead. Enough of its functions are keeping it floating, but it's dead. The Darkness split it wide open. I'm...I'm sorry Guardian. I wish I had better news than this."

The Guardian didn't respond. Instead, she stared at Joker, slowly stepping backward until she backed into her coffin. As she did, she slowly slid to the ground, her entire body limp. "I'm sorry," Joker repeated. The Guardian didn't respond, she was staring wordlessly up at the ceiling. Seconds ticked by, turning into minutes, and after a bit, it became clear that neither Joker nor the Guardian was going to break the silence.

"I don't mean to intrude, but the five of us are still in the dark," Garrus said. "This planet, what happened here?"

"Well, the condensed version is this," Joker said, not taking its optic off of the Guardian. "There was a force, we don't really understand it, called the Darkness. It attacked us out of nowhere and shattered humanity during its golden age, pushing us back to one city. The Traveler was the only thing keeping us barely safe from the Darkness's assault, as well as the attacks from alien races that came in too. Some serving the Darkness, others looking out for their own interests, but we were under siege from all sides. The only weapon we really had was the Traveler's Light, which empowered Guardians, to the point where Ghosts like me could even bring them back from the dead. But now the Traveler and the Darkness are both dead. They fell along with nearly everyone in the final battle. You saw the Traveler on the way in, it's hanging over our head."

Garrus's instincts were screaming at him one thing and one thing only. This absurd. A force literally called the Darkness and its battle thralls had attacked a low tech species, and a megastructure was defending the species by empowering drones with the power to raise the dead? Absurd was the only word for it. And yet he had seen a six-thousand year dead Guardian rise from the dead after whatever Joker had done to it. So Garrus would tentatively accept that Joker was telling the truth, but he would have a thousand and one questions for the drone when he had the time to sit down and organize his thoughts.

"So that structure up in orbit helped you?" Liara asked. "Is it sapient?"

"Yes," the Guardian said, her voice croaking as she did. "At least it used to be. It was dormant for a long time. We tried to wake it, but we were never able to until the final battle." She made a weak movement. "It was its final moment, it seems. The final moment of all of us."

"Most of us," Joker said. "Rasputin is still kicking. He still has a connection to all of the old Warsats, and I think he still has what he needs to make more of them if need be." The drone glanced at the crew of the Iron Will. "He wanted to blow our guests here into oblivion, you have no idea what I had to do in order to make him stop."

"And this Rasputin you keep talking about is who exactly?" Tali asked.

"A warmind," the Guardian said, gingerly getting to her feet. "An A.I. supercomputer that controls a good portion of the system's defenses. One with a bit of an independence streak too." Garrus heard a very clear cough of disapproval from Javik. The only saving grace here was that there was nothing the Prothean could recommend to throw out the airlock this time. "He's on Mars, the fourth planet from the sun. He won't hurt us, not while I'm here. He wants to protect humanity." There was a painful pause. "I guess that means just me now."

"You are not the only one who has lost their kind," the Prothean said, it being impossible to tell if he was trying to be stern of compassionate. "Take comfort in the fact that yours dragged their slayer into oblivion with them. Not all of us could afford that luxury."

The Guardian gave a firm nod, sizing up Javik. "So I need to ask. Who are you people? What are you doing here?"

Garrus decided that the best course of action here was to be blunt. "There's a galactic community out there where around a dozen races work together in relative peace called the Council. We're under attack by a race of ancient machines called the Reapers, every 50,000 years they cull all life in the galaxy that evolved along the lines they set up. They leave technology caches lying around so that young species develop in ways that they know how to exploit. We managed to dodge a lot of their traps, but we're still fighting a war we're not sure if we can win. Those are the broad strokes, but there's a lot more to it than that."

The Guardian stared at him for a minute. She hesitated. Then she spoke. "Joker, contact Rasputin. Ask him how many Warsats he can put together and if they can be deployed outside of the system."

"You're kidding," Joker said. Garrus was taken aback but the abruptness of this decision but said nothing. "Guardian, you know what he's like, he doesn't take orders. We had a minor crisis that was him deciding to protect humanity in the way he pleased."

"Then tell him the last human alive is going to fight these Reaper things and that if he wants to protect humanity, she's going to need his help. Frame it that way if you have to, but we need all the contributions from Rasputin that we can get. We'll ask them if they can build communication relays if we have to," the Guardian said.

"Ugh, I'll do what I can, but it'll probably take me a few days of going back and forth with him, you know what he's like." The Guardian nodded, turning to face Garrus, taking off her helmet as he did.

Garrus blinked. His initial reaction was to say that the alien resembled an Asari, but the more closely he looked, the more differences he saw. As opposed to blue or indigo, its skin was a soft color that was a light to moderate brown. Instead of a bare head, it had short hair, the only alien besides Quarians that Garrus had ever known to have hair, that was a vibrant red that came down to her neck, in addition to hair on her eyelids and right above her eyes. It was more than a little disconcerting, having hair in such odd places.

The alien looked at him, bright green eyes blinking. "I hope I didn't assume too much, but is it safe to say that you want my help?"

"Honestly, I'm at the point where we need anything we can get," Garrus admitted.

"I understand," the Guardian said. "There's not much left for me here, just a system sized tomb. All I ask is that you give this place a respectful distance now that you know what happened here. Honor the fallen. In turn? I'll do what I can to get Rasputin to help. At the very least, his Warsats should help bolster planetary defense systems." She held out her hand in front of her and clenched it. An aura of light blue energy flared around it before vanishing. "And I have enough of the Traveler's Light left in me to fight. So. When do we start?"

Joker gave a loud sigh. "Again? All right Guardian. Your jumpship and Sparrow are still intact, and their ship looks like it has enough room for them. I'll get them up and running."

The Guardian nodded. "If that's alright with you."

"It's not the first time we took in the last member of a race to fight the Reapers," Wrex said, giving Javik a playful nudge. The Prothean didn't say anything but glared at Wrex.

"I'm not in a position to turn away allies," Garrus said, taking a hand off of his rifle to hold out his hand. "Garrus Vakarian."

The Guardian took it. "Jane Shepard."

XXXXX

Author's Note: Sorry that this took a while, graduate school kind of imploded on me when I wasn't looking and now I'm basically changing the type of program I am at the last minute and scrambling to find new job opportunities. It's a long story, but the situation is under control, just very confused and uncertain. I hope that this story was worth the wait.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Josue Garcia, Jonathan Eason, Ryan Van Schaack, and ChaosSpartan575 for their amazing support.


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